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The town that refuses to call last orders on its pubs
The Yorkshire town of Otley has become the first in the country to list all of its pubs as community assets so they cannot be simply sold off. Joe Shute goes on a pub crawl to find out more
2pm may sound a bit early for the first pint of the day but that is not the way it goes in Otley. The pretty West Yorkshire market town, nestled between the foothills of Wharfedale and Chevin Forest, is the pub capital of Britain with 20 hostelries catering to a population of 14,000 and more real ale hand pumps per resident than anywhere else in the country.
Weekday afternoons here and the pubs are still bustling. While southerners sit over their lattes, in Otley it is foaming pints of ale - and cheaper, too.
Fitting, then, that as of April 2015, Otley became the first place in Britain where each of its pubs has been listed as an asset of community value. That means if any one is put up for sale then the good folk of the town have six months to prepare a bid before it goes on the open market. The listing is designed to save pubs the dreaded modern fate of being turned into supermarkets, pound shops and houses. With 6,000 having shut nationwide over the past decade, it is being hailed as a huge step forward in the battle to save Britain’s boozers.
Even Otley has not been immune. There were 32 pubs here in its post-war heyday while in recent years a number have been forced to call time. The Summercross – reputed to be the only pub bearing such a name in the country - closed in 2007 and the Yeoman Inn followed soon after that. In 2009, the 18th century inn The Woolpack - the second oldest in the town - also shut.
The closures prompted the formation of the Otley Pub Club, whose membership now stretches to 300 and which is responsible for engineering the protected status of the town's pubs. It is led by Liberal Democrat MP Greg Mulholland – one of the party’s few survivors from the general election and chair of the all party parliamentary Save the Pub group under the previous government.
Joe Shute, centre, with Greg Mulholland, left, and Andrew McKeown from the Otley Pub Club
When the success of the blanket listing was announced, the pub club came to Whitakers to celebrate, a cosy little inn off the main square. It is here where we sit now, sipping pints of Black Sheep and Leeds Pale and toasting the group's achievement.
“It’s now for people in other areas to look at what we’ve done here,” says Mulholland. “At the moment listing your pub is the only way to stop the predatory purchasing of pubs to turn them into supermarkets without any need for planning permission. It’s an important step forward.”
Mulholland says the listing has been in the planning for 18 months. “Having lost some of our pubs we wanted to make sure in the future the community would have a say.”
Regulars in Whitakers Photo: Lorne Campbell
Present in our party are several members of the pub club including Bob Brook, its secretary, and the man with the enviable task of monitoring the goings on in each and every one of the town’s watering holes.
He admits the success of the plan came as a huge surprise. “I personally never expected us to get all the pubs accepted at first go. We made an individual case for every single one as well as this blanket case that Otley was this famous pub town. I was surprised but very pleased.”
On the way to the loos in Whitakers is a sign advertising “Ladies Night” (a bottle of wine for a fiver, apparently) and a book exchange. Such accoutrements are typical among Otley’s pubs which are far more than places in which just to sink a pint. Recently there have been dementia awareness meetings for residents in several venues; the Black Horse Hotel down the road puts on plays upstairs; a local beekeepers club meets in the Fleece; the racing is on every day in the Bay Horse – where £2.50 pints are served alongside its famous beef and dripping sandwiches; while each night folk music bands drum out a beat all over town.
It is why, after the end of our second pint when I ask Bob Brook which is the best pub in Otley, he stops and takes a sharp intake of breath. “The first rule of pub club is that we cannot have favourites,” he says. “You’re going to have to try them all.”
Bob Brook Photo: Lorne Campbell
And so, a copy of the Otley Ale Trail in hand, I stagger out across the cobbled market square. First up is the Black Bull, reputed to be the oldest pub in town and once drunk dry by Cromwell’s troops on the eve of the battle of Marston Moor.
Dave Pickard, a 47-year-old Otley resident born and bred, is among the clutch of afternoon drinkers propping up the bar. “It is all about the social side of it,” he says. “Our pubs are so important for the town and it is great to do something to stop them shutting.”
The sheer ubiquity, Pickard and others explain, is down to Otley’s history as a market town. Traditionally when pubs had to close during the day, in towns that had a market they could remain open. Otley once had two cattle markets (and still has one on a Monday) which meant during weekends people would arrive in the town by the coachload to exploit the lax drinking rules. The difficulty, so it is said, was matching up the drinker to the correct coach at the end of the day.
Down the road at the Old Cock, a stone-flagged free house which opened in 2010 and has already twice won Leeds CAMRA pub of the year, Cath Littlewood and her friend Norman Hunter sip pints of lager and locally-brewed Mary Jane in the snug. “It is really important to give people the choice,” so says Hunter who has spent 35 happy years among Otley’s pubs. “Otherwise the pubs can just become charity shops and supermarkets.”
Norman Hunter and Cath Littlewood with Joe Shute in the Old Cock Photo: Lorne Campbell
Behind the bar, owner Lee Pullan feels differently. Indeed many landlords in the town have expressed their disquiet at the pubs being listed without their consent – they have no input as long as 20 people add their names to the appeal.
“Otley Pub Club didn’t even come to us,” says Pullan. “I got a letter from Leeds City Council saying your property has been nominated for an asset of community value and I had only two weeks to respond.
“This restriction is just a publicity stunt. Four out of five Otley pubs are struggling, possibly even six. This is designed for the last pub in the village scenario, not for an entire town. I don’t want to sell my pub or change its use unless it becomes unviable. Greg Mulholland does a lot of good work for pubs but I think he has called this one wrong.”
Down the road at the Junction, where 11 real ales are on tap and 60 whiskies behind the bar, landlord Tony Grey feels similarly.
“Otley has a huge number of pubs,” he says in a deep Yorkshire accent as rich as an inch-thick slice of parkin. “When you’ve got 20 pubs and a relatively small population, if you can’t sustain a pub then you’ve got to be able to close it.”
The blanket protection – unprecedented as it is – may well create unforeseen problems. But for now pub town has its reputation set in stone, and drinkers across the country are raising a glass.